Poor little independent movies. They can't get no respect, I tell ya. I'd never even heard of this movie, and the cover looks so cheesy that I passed it by more than once at the video store, but when it went on sale for a dollar, I figured, why the hell not. I was pleasantly surprised when I watched it though, because this is a tense, creepy little chiller. Right from the opening sequences where a group of outlaws in the old west rob a bank and we see poor townspeople and bank employees shot and killed horribly with blood squirting out, we know we're in trouble. Few movies like to show that much brutality, especially in an opening scene when special effects are so expensive, but this movie does and it's a bold move that hooks the audience into the story right from the get-go. I found myself dozing off until blood started flying. That sure got my attention. Not only that, but the filmmakers don't shy away from showing a little kid getting shot in the head right in the beginning of the movie as the outlaws are fleeing town after robbing the bank.

Although some bigger-name actors such as Isaiah Washington and Patrick Fugit appear here, which indicates something of a budget, the brutality and willingness of the filmmakers to take risks with the material indicate that we're not in Kansas anymore. Actually, we're in Alabama, where the movie was shot, and we follow the outlaws through the night to an abandoned plantation where they plan to sleep before setting off for Mexico in the morning to divide up their loot. Of course we viewers are wise to what happens in movies like this and we know that the outlaws most likely won't make it to Mexico. A few scatterings of conflict early on alert us to the fact that not everyone in this motley crew of thieves gets along, and we know that if this haunted ass looking plantation is worth its salt, the evil there will start exploiting these conflicts and turning people against each other posthaste. We are not disappointed. This is one of the creepiest sets I've seen in a long time. It's so deathly quiet in the creepy old rooms that every noise is magnified, and every noise belongs to some creepy ghostly manifestation that usually ends up screaming and giving me heart failure. I must say that I'm not usually a fan of "jump-scares."

To me, they're the lowest form of fright effect, because it's not hard to startle people with sudden loud sounds and make them jump. To me, a movie that can get under my skin and haunt and bother me on a whole other level is preferable to a movie filled with jump scares any day. But this movie did both. The explanation behind what is happening is so subversive that it DOES bother me on another level, and the creatures are so feral and strange looking that they give me the chills even when they're not jumping out from under beds and going "ooga-booga." Lest the words "creature" and "explanation" give you pause, let me clear that up. Don't worry, these aren't aliens or anything stupid like that (not that aliens are stupid, but they are rarely done well in movies, and thus I'd prefer filmmakers avoid them instead of trying to use them and making a hokey stupid fright flick as a result).

I call them "creatures" because it's unclear what they really are; they're some kind of demon-ghost hybrid, and don't worry, I'm not giving anything away, you have to see them to believe the... Nest, when I say "explanation," I don't mean that a character stands up out of nowhere and gives a long speech about what's really going on here. Instead, the gruesome details of what happened in and around this house are told in brief flashbacks given as visions when the various outlaws are attacked by the ghostly apparitions, and the flashbacks tell the story without being too over-explainey, which is difficult to do but refreshing to see. I wish more mainstream films would take this film's lead and offer stories that are creepy and subversive like this, because I dug the hell out of this movie.

It's probably the constraints of a micro budget, but the CGI effects in this movie really stood out. They were always accompanied by a jump scare so I never had much time to worry about them because I was too busy peeing my pants in startled terror, but upon closer
scrutiny, the CGI is pretty bad here. Luckily it never really detracts too much from the movie.

Creepy and effective. Worth a watch (and a better DVD case than the cheesy one it has).